When I took office two years ago, San Diego’s urban core neighborhoods were in the midst of a homelessness crisis with no clear strategy to tackle the issue. My top priority has been improving our response to this devastating crisis, but one Councilmember can’t do it alone.

Building on successful approaches in other cities and national best practices, I outlined ideas and policies for a holistic response, and working with my colleagues, we’ve made important progress to increase funding, expand life-saving supportive services, and house our homeless.

In early 2017, the City Council created a Select Committee on Homelessness dedicated to reviewing and improving City approaches for reducing homelessness. The committee held its final meeting Thursday, and our ongoing work now continues through standing committees.

It’s important to review our accomplishments, and identify what challenges and opportunities remain ahead to ensure all San Diegans have a safe, stable home.

Last year, the Hepatitis A emergency demanded quick action, and with the leadership of the Council and Mayor, we successfully implemented temporary safe camping and parking programs, additional public restrooms, hand-washing stations, targeted street sanitation, storage facilities, and bridge shelters providing safety and services for 700 homeless San Diegans.

Meanwhile, as Chair of the Select Committee, I started with the basics. We updated the Council’s Policy on Homelessness for the first time since 1995 to with a commitment to proven Housing First strategies. Collaborating with our state legislators, we streamlined housing development opportunities, and the City officially declared a Shelter Crisis, unlocking millions in new state funding for housing and services.

With the County, we’ve doubled the Psychiatric Emergency Response Teams providing emergency assessment and referrals to help people with mental illness. At the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, we’re improving the region’s underlying data systems and coordination, while paving the way to receive millions more in state homeless dollars and private investment to scale up successful programs countywide.

As we identified gaps in our system, the Select Committee acted on new approaches to house our homeless. That’s included a targeted rapid housing effort, emphasizing diversion programs, and tapping state funding to lay the groundwork for a new flexible housing spending pool to support innovative rental assistance strategies. We’re currently moving forward a pilot program coupling intensive employment services with our rapid re-housing programs, and implementation of the Housing Commission’s Housing 3.0 plan is providing $79 million to boost affordable housing.

As success stories from other regions have demonstrated, real change takes years of sustained effort. We have a strong foundation, and downtown’s on-street homeless population is decreasing, but there’s much more ahead.

Last month, Council unanimously adopted my resolution setting a goal of building 140 Permanent Supportive Housing units in each council district – enough to house every chronically homeless San Diego household. And city staff have now begun assessing city-owned properties to identify possible housing sites and ways to expedite projects.

Our committee moved forward on creating a citywide outreach protocol improving our proactive work meeting homeless San Diegans where they are to resolve encampment issues and connect them with the specific services and housing they need. And now, the Housing Commission is underway on my request to develop a comprehensive plan to help ensure our limited homelessness dollars go to our most acute needs.

In 2019, we need a regional solution to provide recuperative care beds allowing people to fully recover from acute health issues after leaving area hospitals, and revival of the Resource Access Program (RAP) to relieve pressure on our 9-1-1 emergency services. And we need a workable strategy to convert dilapidated motels into supportive housing, which brings new units online faster and cheaper.

We’ve made critical progress to develop services and outreach programs aligned with clearly-defined needs, and soon we’ll have the analysis for a comprehensive homelessness strategy to guide future City investments.

Ultimately, we will be judged by the most important metric of all: Making housing attainable for all San Diegans. I am confident we’re finally on the right track, and we have identified opportunities that will bring us closer to resolving our homelessness crisis. I remain committed to prioritizing this work throughout San Diego until every homeless individual is housed.

San Diego City Councilmember Chris Ward represents the Third District including Downtown, Hillcrest, North Park and other urban core neighborhoods. He is the Chair of the City Select Committee on Homelessness and Vice-Chair of the Regional Task Force on the Homeless.

Comments

Thank you for these efforts to support people experiencing homelessness, provide better healthcare & recuperative care options, and prevent more San Diegans from losing permanent stable housing.

Related to prevention: I encourage your Committee to review the impact of converting permanent residential units into Short Term Vacation Rentals. The conversion of housing to “mini-hotels” is reducing already limited housing availability in San Diego.

Lori, as Councilman Ward pointed out, the last meeting of his Committee just happened. A lot of very good intentions. MANY Unsheltered San Diegans continued to be mercilessly persecuted and prosecuted during the duration of this Committee. Criminalizing poverty and mental illness (including substance abuse) is NOT the answer, but was never confronted by the City Council, which just allowed Mayor Faulconer to escalate it.

My goodness, to read Mr. Ward’s commendation of his efforts and those of his colleagues gives the impression that the end of suffering is near for those who are homeless or very nearly homeless. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The truth is, the “no-wrong-door” approach that Mr. Ward and others spent so much time talking about as the most important innovation in addressing homelessness in the City and County never came about. Furthermore, the response to the hepatitis epidemic was reactive, not proactive. The epidemic would not have happened in the first place if Mr. Ward and other officials had actively addressed the need for safe spaces with adequate hygiene facilities for the homeless. As for PERT, please. Just listening to the stories of people who are interrogated and ticketed and threatened and moved along by these so-called experts belies the beneficence of the PERT mandate. The fact is, police are being asked to address a problem San Diego City and County officials have let get worse for decades. The driving forces producing households and individuals with extremely low or no income remain unaddressed by public officials, including Mr. Ward. Does he care? Undoubtedly. Has he tried? Sure. Was he successful in establishing “a foundation” that can move the housing crisis needle into some minimal safety zone? Absolutely, positively not. It’s not time to brag. It’s time to examine every single public policy decision to see whether it will worsen, or ease the problem.